Why Top Shelf?

Why Choose Top Shelf Media?

We often get asked by clients what makes us different. There are several key values we try to stick to when working on any project:

Transparency on pricing. Our pricing directly reflects the time that will be spent to complete your project, often as a fixed fee.

Brutal honesty on problems. If there’s a problem with your website, we’re going to tell you, even if it’s our fault.

A higher standard for work. A large portion of our day to day work is fixing other local agency’s work. The state some of these sites come to us in is completely unacceptable, and we aspire to a much higher standard.

We’re problem solvers. We’re agnostic when it comes to web development, we don’t shy away from anything and are always up for a challenge. Our main goal is to make things easier for you as a business owner.

Top Shelf Media was founded by Tom Watts in 2016 after facing first-hand frustration with the local web design and development companies. The idea behind Top Shelf was to provide superior service, quality work and to always offer fair pricing.

We listen to our client’s needs and work with them to develop a concept. We use our talented designers to create stunning graphical representations, then ensure that our websites are developed to the highest standards by our programmers. All web projects get a manual review and quality control assessment to make sure we’re putting out the best work we possibly can.

Who Is Tom?

My name is Tom Watts and I’m the Owner of Top Shelf Media in Calgary. I was born in a small town in England just north of London.

From a young age I was always intrigued by how things worked, and as I grew older my tendencies grew nerdier and nerdier. We always had computers around, and my brother and I would always try to push them as far past their limits as we possibly could. We learned a lot about computers, but we also learned a lot about testing, optimization and stability.

Towards the end of high school I learned HTML and coded my first website. However, growing up in a small town, opportunities in the digital marketing industry were very limited. So, I joined an accounting firm, where I worked and studied for the next 4 years. At the end of that time I received my accounting qualifications, learning a lot along the way about a variety of businesses.

Unfortunately I also learned that accountancy wasn’t a career path I wanted to follow forever.

Just after finishing with my accounting studies, I took a 6 week trip to visit Canada, where I stayed with a awesome family I knew in Okotoks – just south of Calgary.

Safe to say, I loved it here. Four months after the initial trip, I flew right back to Calgary and started figuring out how I could make Calgary my home. I got a work permit and started working right away and in 2014 I took on my first paid web design client as a freelancer.

It wasn’t long before the business growth started escalating, more and more projects on my desk, the late nights and early starts followed. It was such an easy move to go full-time, customers were happy, and I was too as I truly believed I had found my passion.

The part I love the most is integration with our customers, we learn everyday about new industries and solve unique business problems. Every day has new challenges, but it really doesn’t feel like work to me, I just love making things happen.

I take an enormous amount of pride in personally ensuring every project we complete is high quality, and as optimized as those old computers my brother and I played with.